Flick through the gallery to see this year’s Golden Globe red carpet arrivals. The dresses are gorgeous and everyone on the red carpet are dressed at their best. Which colour do you like most? Red dress, gold dress, black dress, blue dress…

We had a lot of fun watching the China Reality Dating Show ‘If you are the one’ during our China trip. We were more interested in watching what the young people are wearing in China, and this dating show gave us a glimpse of that.

Reality shows are very popular in China these days, many copied the popular reality shows from the US. In the US, we have so many reality shows, for many things.

Kim Kardashian even has a reality TV show while she is pregnant. Having a baby while working under the spotlight, that must put some stress on the baby in the tummy? Kim should get her nursery rhymes ready instead, don’t you think?

Anyways, that’s how Kim Kardashian gets famous. BTW, we love how Kim dressed up as Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt last Valentine’s Day. She looks stunning.

So back to the dating business: what are your wearing to a first date? What are people wearing to a date show in the USA?

Let’s see the differences between the China dating show and the USA dating show, shall we?

February will be a very happy and busy month. We can see it is coming! There are 30 days to go to Valentine’s Day from now on. Four days before the Valentine’s Day, there will be the Chinese New Year, which falls on 10 Feb. Let’s celebrate in style, shall we?

While in China, we found the biggest fashion treasure hunting place! Taobao.com seems very popular for young people in China to shop for their wardrobes and for good reasons, too.

We had a look and there are virtually every brand under the sun in taobao.com. For the next 30 days, we will show case some nice clothes from taobao.com. There are many Australian, Asia, and USA brands there. So many that we lose count!

We love sportsgirl, cotton on, Jacquie, basque, wish, witchery, David Lawrence and many more brands back in Sydney. We have picked up a nice Basque dress during our China trip. A little black dress on taobao.com.

It’s a full length black dress, quite formal, so you won’t find Mrs D wearing this at any Jakarta shopping mall for sure. 😀

Taobao.com not only serves the China, Hongkong area, it also has started its Singapore market, and some other Asia markets. Their ambition is to expand to the rest of the world, like EBay.

So if you are in the China and great Asia regions like us, you might want to check taobao.com out? But first, find a friend who knows Chinese, one of the most difficult languages in the world!

Good luck, taobao (means treasure hunt in Chinese). 😀

For an easier task (minus the difficult in learning Chinese), to see all the brands we are interested in, why not head to our very own midnightvisitor’s fashion online guide? This is another project we have been working on, and it will be updated over time to show you all the goodies we found in the fashion department!

We love gifts and Christmas is the busiest time of the year for the Gift Business. So do your kids love your Christmas gifts this year?

We were thinking of doing a 2012 year in review as it is the most proper way to end the old year and begin the new. Somehow, we end up creating this gifting problem cartoon. Hope you like it!

Modern day gifting can be a tricky business.But don’t worry, in the olden days, Christmas gifting also can be very, very dramatic. Why not have a look at this short story?

We will do a new column on the new Midnightvisitor site (Yep, the new site is still in progress, we haven’t forgotten about it :D). We will put up a new short story every weekend. Hope you like them. We certainly love to read in the D house.

BTW, have you got your Gift list ready on Amazon yet? We are preparing for next year’s Christmas gifts already, haha. 😀

Long flights could be hard especially for the little ones. This winter, where are you going to spend your Christmas?

Lots of the expats in Jakarta are getting ready to fly!

To America.

To France.

To Sweden.

To Australia!

Are you travel ready this Christmas? What have you packed in your suit cases? Even if you are not traveling, what are you planning to wear this Christmas?

We love dresses, the fancier the dress the better. Little woman’s dream.

But it didn’t work sometime. You see, most of the time, we are invited to attend family gatherings where wearing casual outfits are the best.

We certainly don’t want to go to a picnic in the park with our fancy dress, let alone sitting on the grass with it. Or how about a beach-side barbecue dinner? Can you image wearing high heels and hot red lips standing among the smoke? Oh, no. We can’t do that. Not with the children in sight.

So we found a few items and through together a casual yet stylish outfit for this Christmas, just for you, and with affordable prices.

Actually, we haven’t got around to do that either (CHECKING THE AFFORDABLE PRICES, that is), because we have a dinner party to attend. A casual one, of course, in a cozy Jakarta home!

So see you tomorrow.

Meanwhile you can check a few of our fancy dresses here while planning a more practical travel outfit for the flight!

Obviously, we went to the wrong shopping mall last week. To do Jakarta justice, this week we will show you the real Christmas celebration in our beloved city Jakarta.

Not only will we show you all the Santa Claus in Jakarta, we will also show you some ‘heavenly beauty’, just to make up the misunderstanding of our part from last week’s Hello Kitty roadshow.

Enjoy.

To start with, we will show you the grandest Santa Claus and sleigh we have ever seen in a shopping mall:

Like it?

Have a look from the back. Santa is flying in the sky with silver reindeers. Mind you this shopping mall is 6 floors tall. Look at those tiny people on the ground floor.

This Santa Claus and silver reindeers sleigh is at least 5 meters long. It is huge, built with great efforts and is magnificent indeed. We have never seen anything like this in a shopping mall back in Sydney. Have you seen anything like this in your city? We would like to hear.

Jakarta not only has the grandest Santa Sleigh, we also have white Christmas snowy castles.

Plus Christmas gift shop. Snowman, Christmas trees, baubles, candy canes, ornaments. You name it, we have it right here. With a coconut tree standing by. 😀

Christmas in Sogo, a fancy department store.

Now that we have proven that we do have Santa Claus in Jakarta. We will start our real topic for today. How about some more Heavenly Beauty? And a blue one would be nice?

This is called Hijab. It is a everyday wear for Muslin women and is a fashion icon in its own right.

Back in Sydney, girls are interested in topics such as ‘How to wear scarves in a hundred ways’ in winter time. In Jakarta, we have ‘How to wear a Hijab in 100 ways’, all year round. As a matter of fact, we have a Hijaber community here just to do that.

Do you have a scarf community in your city? Maybe we should start our very own right now.

Want to see some real life hijaber in action? Jakarta has plenty.

A single lady entering the shopping mall. Love the beige colour she is wearing. Very on the trend, slim, modern and beautiful. Wait, did we just say ‘modern’? Actually, it does have a very modern feeling to it, if you have seen it yourself in person.

Another young lady. This time in grey outfit and matching hijab. The girls in Jakarta sure knows their colours.

A mum buying a toy for her little boy. And that’s the aunt in the far right corner wearing a white hijab. Young and pretty. The best age.

Obviously, older women wear hijab more often. This couple looks lovely. Great colour match. How long have they been married?

One of the benefits of living in Jakarta is there are many factory outlets here. Every now and then, we will go there and do some treasure hunt. It is fun.

You would think we have paid the original prices for our winter clothes below:

Hack no, we won’t buy any winter clothes without checking out the many Jakarta factory outlets.

As we have said before, shopping in the factory outlets can be a hit and miss. There are lots of fake products in these factory outlets. So have we bought the authentic products?

Check out the actual hoodies and see the labels, textures, and feelings. What do you think?

Are these genuine branded garments or not? We think they are. Our guess is these are current season genuine export clothes. For whatever reason, they are left behind and are now sold in the many factory outlets in Jakarta.

Can’t believe it is the last day of Nov, and we are only 25 days away from Christmas. Are you excited?

We have a big trip to make to the winter land (actually Miss D will have to make two trips as she will go with her Honours choir to China in early Feb next year). Since we live in sunny hot Jakarta, you wouldn’t expect us to have any winter clothing, would you?

Actually, we do have a few winter items that we can wear. Shows how good a planner Mrs. D is, she just knew that we would need them on a rainy winter’s day.

Well, our winter clothes are still not quite enough, and it is always fun to shop for more anyway. So here’s what we bought for our trip:

A pale white coloured hoodie by Junk Food. On sale for USD 40, down from USD 80.

A grey hoodie by Aerie for American Eagle. USD 49.99.

A grey turtle neck long sleeve top . On sale for USD 19,99, down from USD 39.99.

Pretty boring, right?

Ambitious as we are, we dress in a conventional way. Especially for winter clothes, we stick to our grey, beige, black, brown. You know, the safe colours.

But every story has its twist, a bit of a complication, a bait, that keeps the readers coming back…

Well, is this a writer’s 101 post? It sure sounds like one now. 😀

So our twist is like this:

……………………………………………………………………..

Actually, it is Friday and we have a dinner party to attend tonight. Soz, no time to finish the writing. Can you come back tomorrow?

We will finish whatever is needed tomorrow, if we get over our hung over, that is. Promise. (seriously, this is NOT the twist, OK. The twist is due out tomorrow!)

Diamond is a girl’s best friend. How about gold? Not a bad friend either, we hope.

This holiday, why not add some glitter and glamor to your wardrobe. Gold is a must have colour in any girls wardrobe this Christmas. It will transform any ordinary day into a magical fairytale in no time. Gold will bring your luck. Maybe you will even meet Mr. Right in that shiny armor of gold? Gold can enchant and soften the most stubborn heart.

Nicole Kidman, Cleopatra, Merilyn Monroe have all dressed up in gold before our time. Gold is what legends are made of.

We love gold, not in a cheap way though. Gold can actually look cheap if not dressed properly. It needs a bit of personality and charm to match its grand status. Are you ready for gold this Christmas?

We have picked a few golden pieces right in time for the Christmas season. Hope you like them.

How about a little black dress for this Christmas? Maybe you have an office party to attend, or maybe you have a formal meeting to head. Whatever the occasion, the little black dress won’t fail you this Christmas.

The little black dress is timeless and eternally stylish. Look at Nicole Kidman, how flattering that little black dress she is wearing on her body? This black dress hit her on all the right spots and make her one fashion icon we admire.

The little black dress is always clean, slim looking and elegant. We can dress it up with an expensive jacket this Christmas. How about this jacket in royal blue color? It adds glamor and charm to our little black dress.

Team these up with a nice, high quality handbag. Gold and pear necklaces. High heels. There, we can conquer the business world in no time with an outfit like this.